HOWTO: Determine Which 32-bit Operating System Is Being Used

• Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Visual Basic, 32-bit only, for Windows, version 4.0

SUMMARY

An application may need to perform different tasks depending on which operating system the computer is using. This article shows by example how to detect which operating system your application is using.

MORE INFORMATION

The Win32 GetVersionEx function returns information that a program can use to identify the operating system. Specifically, it returns the major and minor revision number, build number, and a platform identifier. This function supported only by the Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5 (or later) 32-bit operating systems.

Steps to Obtain Operating System Information

1. Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.

2. Add the following code to the Form1_Click event procedure:

      Private Sub Form1_Click()
         Dim osinfo As OSVERSIONINFO
         Dim retvalue As Integer
   
         osinfo.dwOSVersionInfoSize = 148
         osinfo.szCSDVersion = Space$(128)
         retvalue = GetVersionExA(osinfo)
   
         Print osinfo.dwMajorVersion
         Print osinfo.dwMinorVersion
         Print osinfo.dwBuildNumber
         Print osinfo.dwPlatformId
         Print osinfo.szCSDVersion
      End Sub
   
   

3. On the Insert menu, click Module to add Module1 to the project.

4. Add the following code to the general declarations section of Module1:

   Public Type OSVERSIONINFO

         dwOSVersionInfoSize As Long
         dwMajorVersion As Long
         dwMinorVersion As Long
         dwBuildNumber As Long
         dwPlatformId As Long
         szCSDVersion As String * 128
   

   End Type

      Declare Function GetVersionExA Lib "kernel32" _
         (lpVersionInformation As OSVERSIONINFO) As Integer
   
   

5. Run the program.

REFERENCES

For more information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q92936
   TITLE     : How to Get Windows 3.1 Version Number in VB with GetVersion

Keywords          : APrgWindow vb432 VB4WIN
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0